Review: In a makeover of musical comedy, “ Smash ” is up to his name

The great musicals are great mysteries, and not only because they are so rare. They are also mysteries in their functioning. To succeed, they must keep far ahead of the public, like thrillers with twists and turns that you cannot see coming. These are song means instead of murders.

“Smash”, which opened its doors on Thursday at Imperial Theater, is more one that va-to-it, and when the great song comes, it is a killer. But the effect is the same: it is the great musical that no one saw coming.

Or at least I didn’t do it. In 2012, I appreciated the first season of the NBC television series, also entitled “Smash”, on which the musical is based. His pilot, organizing a competition between two modern aspiring actresses to play in Marilyn Monroe in a musical on Broadway, was great. But as the weeks progressed, the story becoming far -fetched and gloppier, the petile has collapsed. Only the songs, by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and the dances, by Joshua Bergasse, triggered tops.

So I did not know what to make the announcement that the material was resettled for Broadway as a comedy instead of a melodrama. A video of “Let Me Be Your Star”, the exciting emotional duo which was the culmination of the pilot, left me disconcerted. Rearranged as a solo at the start of the new show, it sounded badly: too cool, too light, with a Las Vegas Leer. Did the creative team, led by director Susan Stroman, plan to repair the property by ransacking the few things that the series has obtained?

It turned out to be a brilliant feint.

Broadway’s “smash” being the kind of mystery I mentioned, I will try to pay attention to spoilers. But there is so much to appreciate in the imperial that I could give 10, and there would still be 20. In any case, I do not spoil anything to say that “Smash” remains the story of a monroe musical entitled “Bombshell”. But in this version, actresses are not hopes of intermediate level; Rather Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hunger) is already a star, and Karen Cartwright (Caroline Bowman) his longtime sub-study. They are not in competition – at the beginning.

This changes spectacularly when Ivy reads a book on the method. Do not just play a “sparkling and sparkling” monroe, she insists on giving her character more depth. Even if that’s exactly what the creative team has tried to avoid – a show that wallowed in the Tawdry tragedy – she hires a coach of the actors’ studio, guards of the method of the method. When this strange and prohibited coach arrives, pushing absurd ideas and amphetamines, “bombshell” begins in crater.